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“So, the fish that I buy from you, who catches it?” I asked my fishmonger, Kristin Donovan. I serve seafood from Hooked Inc. because I trust the owners and how they source their product. But there’s a difference between having faith and knowing. Kristin made some calls and I set out on the road to see for myself.

It’s dinnertime when I pull into Wheatley, Ontario, three and a half hours west of Toronto, on the shore of Lake Erie. John Hyatt leads me through a four-bedroom, three-car-garage minimansion that probably costs as much as my 1,000-square-foot loft in Kensington. On the side of the house is a waist-high commercial deep-fryer, bubbling away. The family — John and his wife, Donna Taylor, college-aged sons James and Taylor, their girlfriends Jessica and Jessica, plant manager Jake Guenter and his wife, Eva, a cutter who can filet 120 pounds of perch an hour, their footstool-sized daughter Monica who hugs me goodnight, cocker spaniels Odie and Kiwi — is in the pool house, eating salad and fish.

I’m late for dinner. Having left Toronto at 2 p.m. on a Thursday, I got stuck in gridlock near the Gardiner and it took me 40 minutes to clear town. James fries up a fresh platter of french fries, pickerel cheeks and perch filets. Those two lake fish make up the family business, almost exclusively.

Bottles of Aylmer’s and President’s Choice ketchup sit upside down on the counter.

Pickerel reeled in by the crew of the Taylor Maid. The fish sell for $2.50 a pound if they weigh under 3.25 pounds and $2 a pound for larger fish. (Corey Mintz photo)

The fish is phenomenal. Pickerel, like trout, are about 18 inches long, a denser flesh but lighter flavour. Perch are small, pancake-sized. The cheeks and filets, coated in the Hyatts’ secret batter, are like popcorn. As I stuff my face, the boys head off to bed, like they do every night around 8 p.m.

I have a lot of questions about what’s going to happen on the boat in the morning. But only one seems pertinent; what is the bathroom situation?

“Over the side,” says John. “Or in a bucket.”

20 minutes later I’m in bed.

At 2 a.m. my alarm goes off. Margo Olmstead is in the kitchen of her bed and breakfast, pulling my sandwich (perch and egg on brioche she baked the night before) from the oven, wrapping up my blueberry muffins and a juice box. She had insisted on waking to hand me a warm packed breakfast and who am I to tell another host how to do her job? With the lack of plumbing where I’m going, I pass on coffee.

The Taylor Fish Company, where the catch is processed, is across the street from the family home. In the parking lot I climb into a truck with a group of silent men. They sip coffee as we drive for half an hour on the one road leading into Erieau. The only thing visible outside is a line of blinking red lights in the distance, wind towers, unpopular with most of the locals.

It’s still pitch black when we arrive at the Erieau harbour and board the 69-foot boat, the Taylor Maid. As the diesel engine roars to life and we glide away from shore it’s blacker still, the fluorescent light inside barely spilling an inch beyond the open side door, making no dent in the stygian night. The fishermen — James and Taylor, Dennis Church, Custodio Dapertaria — pull up their orange, polyurethane-treated pants and mount the puller, a device that reels in the grid nets.

In the captain’s cabin, Terry Taylor (Donna’s brother), a big guy in sweatshirt and sweatpants, keeps his lights off. The room is illuminated by a series of sonar and weather screens and half a dozen radio devices (a stereo, different CB radios tuned to chat with family, shore, other boats, etc.).

“I’ve got a bunch of different scanners,” he says, “trying to listen to all of Gotham.”

Fishermen (editors say that the gender-neutral pronoun is fishers but Donna laughs at that and tells me she’s never heard of a female fisherman) used to do all this just by looking up at the stars.

Terry hadn’t wanted to join his dad’s business. He went to school to study computers, but balked at the math and science that demanded. It seemed reasonable, at the time, that his father should put him in charge of the boat. Now that he’s older, seeing his nephews get started, recalling how, during James’ first month, the boy got an anchor hooked to his pants and was dragged overboard, Terry realizes how hard it was for his dad to trust and train his party-boy son with a pivotal role in the family business and to lose the solid, existing captain in the bargain.

It’s too dark to see outside, but as we approach the first co-ordinates, Dennis and Taylor spot a buoy and hook it to the puller. The machine clanks and splashes as it reels in a grid net that was placed in the water yesterday.

The nets for pickerel are set around the thermocline, the depth where the warm water on top meets the cold water below. They have a mesh aperture 5-inches wide, allowing the pickerel to get caught, but for other, smaller fish to swim through. At a lower depth, there are nets with 2.5-inch grids to catch perch, again limiting bycatch. A decent haul is about 25 fish per net. The first couple of nets they pull up only have about a dozen each. Terry estimates that on a good year they can make up to $75,000 each. But a day with no fish means no money for anyone. A few nets come up empty.

Terry turns on the radio. The ship’s hold echoes with the tinny sound of “Rock and Roll All Night” by KISS as James and Custodio sit down next to the bins and methodically unhook the walleye pickerel from the nets, sorting them into bins by size. They earn $2.50 a pound for pickerel weighing under 3.25 pounds and $2 a pound for jumbos. The occasional bycatch — sheepshead, suckers — are counted as well, weighed and added to a manifest listing everything they’ve caught, and where in grid 237 of Lake Erie they’ve caught it, before being tossed back into the water.

Around 4:30 a.m. a thin purple line begins to define the horizon between black water and black sky. By 5 it’s a curtain of violet, magenta, grape and lilac. At 7 my daily morning alarm goes off, the theme from Yojimbo. The light on the water is now blinding.

The men move quietly back and forth, pulling up nets and sorting fish, occasionally chatting.

Since March they’ve taken five days off. Yet most of them will still go out fishing once they get home. For Taylor it’s a social activity, a relaxing afternoon spent drinking beer with his girlfriend. But James genuinely loves fish and says he just wants to keep his fridge filled with pickerel. Odder still, aside from the occasional barbecuing, the Hyatts almost exclusively deep-fry their fish. They like sushi but were weirded out by some cowboy chefs who once came on the boat and started eating the perch raw.

Eventually the nets start coughing up a more generous amount of fish. Between Terry and group of other fishermen who catch for the business, they own a collection of licenses that allow them to pull 170,000 pounds of perch per year, 280,000 of pickerel and as much silver bass as they want, from the lake. On a good day they’ll catch 3,000 pounds. This is not a great day. They only catch about 1,800 pounds of fish, all accounted for on the intake form, under threat of fines and random inspections by the Ministry of Natural Resources.

We’re back at shore by noon, an early day for the crew. After packing the fish into bins with ice and stopping at the tackle shop (seriously, these guys can’t get enough fishing), Taylor cracks a Coors Light in the truck and asks if I want one. I do, but I’m wary enough about driving back to Toronto on little sleep.

And first I need to cook lunch for John and his family. I’ve prepped asparagus and a beurre blanc sauce, which of course splits as I reheat it. In a cast iron pan on high heat, I sear a few fat pieces of pickerel, toss a bit of water in the pan once they’re scorched on one side, cover and let them cook through.

It’s a pressure I’ve never felt before, cooking for the people who provide my food.

It’s not that I needed to see these people reading bedtime stories to the pickerel. But witnessing the integrity of the work reinvigorates my faith in stores such as Hooked, my willingness to advocate that customers put their trust into the hands of small shop owners who can account for where their food comes from.

I was only out on that boat as a night tourist, so it’s hard for a city boy like me to grasp, the odd hours and work that go into catching these fish, a nocturnal life as different from mine as a bird is to a cheetah. I want to do justice to the fish.

John insists that it’s a light alternative, even though the fish is covered in the butter sauce. And I guess it is light, compared to deep-frying. Taylor eats with gusto and confesses that he didn’t know the fish could be cooked this way.

Personally, I’m dying for another bite of deep-fried fish and wish I could stay for dinner. But I want to beat the Toronto traffic.

I’ve been full of pep all day. The lack of sleep didn’t slow me down on the boat. But as soon as I hit the highway, my eyelids grow heavy and the following distance between my Mazda 3 and the car in front of me grows hazy. I pull off into a rest stop, close my eyes for 15 minutes, then discover why Tim Hortons coffee is so popular.

Pan-Fried Pickerel With Beurre Blanc Sauce

Beurre Blanc

It’s traditional to strain the sauce. But feel free to leave the shallots in. I did.

1 shallot, peeled and sliced

1/2 cup (125 mL) white wine

1/4 cup (60 mL) white vinegar

1/4 cup (60 mL) cream

1/2 cup (125 mL) unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Salt to taste

In a wide pan, bring shallots, wine and vinegar to a boil. Simmer until pan is almost dry, about 5-10 minutes. Add cream and whisk until incorporated. Add butter, one cube at a time, whisking constantly. Season with salt and to taste. Strain through fine mesh.

Pan-fried pickerel

1 pickerel filet, skin on, portioned in four pieces

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp vegetable oil

1/4 cup (60 mL) white wine (or beer or water)

Lemon

With a sharp knife, score fish on skin side to minimize buckling in pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

In a cast iron pan on medium-high heat, use oil to sear fish, skin side down. Once browned, about 3 minutes, turn and sear on flesh side, about 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium, add wine to pan and cover. Use steam to cook fish until a pairing knife, held in the fish’s centre for a few seconds, comes out hot, about 4 minutes. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over top. Serve with beurre blanc sauce.

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